Apples & Banans – Sing & Sign Along – and practice Vowel Sounds!

In fact, I’ve done this song before on the video show, several years ago. But the quality and lighting in that video was not so good, so I figured it was time for a remake!

You might know the song “Apples & Bananas” from hearing Raffi’s recording of it, or you may know it from Barney. This song is so great on so many levels – it’s great for language development in our littlest ones, it’s wonderful for bonding as saying silly words and sounds together makes for lots of giggles and good times, and it’s a great and subtle introduction to vowels and vowel sounds! And this week, I even teach you some basic sign language to go along with the song!

I fell in love with “Baby Signs” or Baby Sign language years and years ago when I was first exposed to it while training at a Gymboree Play & Music in Manhattan. And it was really fantastic to see first hand how helpful sing language was to toddlers and parents. Knowing even just some basic signs opened up communication lines and alleviated tantrums that are often brought on by the frustration of a toddler who is being misunderstood.

So in this week’s video, we learn the signs for “I like”, “eat”, “apple” and “banana” and get to practice them over and over again – even while saying “I like to oot not oot ooples and ba-noo-noos”. 🙂

So, yes. It is quite repetitive, and if you end up hearing this video on repeat – I apologize!!! 🙂 But repetition really is the “spice of life” for young ones. Hearing something over and over rand gaining mastery builds their self-esteem and self confidence. And saying apple and oople and aye-ple and all of these silly versions of these words, gets those mouths and tongues moving and really helps with speech and language development.

But this song and video isn’t beneficial for just toddlers. Our preschoolers and Kindergartners love singing this song too. For one – silliness rules with our Pre-K and Ks, and this song is just plain old silly. And they live for being silly WITH YOU! Singing this song together is great for relationship building.

Additionally this song builds literacy skills! Once a child sings this song enough, they will know their vowels without even realizing that they’ve learned them. AND they will have learned all the long sounds of those vowels. It makes learning these things easy and fun for them, and easy and fun for you to teach. So a HUGE win/win!

I hope you enjoy the video and if you know someone else who might enjoy it – please share! Feel free to share this blog post and/or this video with friends and on any social media you enjoy using.